University of Edinburgh – KxConferencing Configuration

Kinetic is a software provider specialising in accommodation, conferencing, and events management systems for the higher education and hospitality sectors. Their product suites include Student Accommodation Management, Conferencing and Events Management, Catering Management, and Residential Management.

The University of Edinburgh is one of the oldest universities in the English-speaking world, located in Scotland's capital. Its Accommodation, Catering and Events (ACE) team manages four year-round hotels and extensive conference facilities, operating nearly 200 beds and hosting both internal and external events including summer campus accommodation. The university has been a Kinetic client since 2006.

As the university's commercial activities grew, the Kinetic system configuration became increasingly complex and siloed across departments. Charge Templates and Prices were set up differently by different teams, leading to repetition, fragmented data, and difficulty analysing performance across the business. The system was not intuitive for end-users, resulting in inconsistent data and poor reporting capabilities. A university-wide finance system change also required re-coding of all templates.

Kinetic provided its KxConfiguration system, used as a Property Management System (PMS) for bookings, reservations, and hotel operations, as well as Conferencing and Events Management and Student Accommodation modules. The university leveraged KxConfiguration to conduct a comprehensive review and standardisation of its system setup.

Following a strategic review in 2018, the university assigned a dedicated Business Analyst resource to improve reporting and conduct a comprehensive review of KxConfiguration. The review uncovered previously unknown functionalities and led to standardisation of core setup elements, development of a naming convention for Charge Templates, removal of obsolete templates, and re-coding of all templates to align with a university-wide finance system change. The Business Development Team worked closely with Kinetic to streamline configurations across departments.

The streamlined KxConfiguration resulted in significantly increased revenue year on year, improved customer satisfaction through more efficient booking processing, more consistent and accurate data for better business decision-making, reduced admin time, and faster onboarding of new team members. The university continues to work closely with Kinetic to develop further functionality and integrations.